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Scrivener Is My Novel Writing System…For Now

Back in September of 2015 I came upon a bargain sale on the Scrivener writing program. I enjoy the MakeUseOf tech website, and they have a section here where two or three times a year Scrivener is on sale for only 20USD! My purchase was for the Windows version, but I believe the Mac version is the same price because Scrivener was originally developed for the Mac. I can’t see Literature and Latte (the company behind Scrivener) preferring Windows over Mac.

In the realm of authoring I’m primarily what you’d call a Plotter, though I slip over into Pantser methodology (there’s an oxymoron for you!) when I blog or get into subjects that are only rightly approached with the Pantser style, like Christian teaching. The inspiration of the Holy Spirit should never be confined to guidance from Self…He should always have free reign to guide the writer!

Identifying primarily as a Plotter, I began searching several years ago for software that would help me get all my ducks in a row because I’m scatterbrained. When projects begin to sprawl, I lose track of where specific items are. When I lose track, I lose momentum. When I lose momentum, I stop writing in disgust.

So, for the sake of ever finishing anything of Great Consequence, I needed organization. I could always fill in the middle parts by Pantsing…

I came across a wonderful little program several years ago (10?) called yWriter by Spacejock Software. The creator, Simon Haynes, bills it as, “Aword processor which breaks your novel into chapters and scenes, helping you keep track of your work while leaving your mind free to create”. Sounds a lot like Scrivener, huh? Well, you’d be impressed with how similar the two products are.

He did a fantastic job on yWriter, and he’s up to version 6 now. I think I originally got into it with version 2. This newest version is specified for Windows from Vista up to Win10. And do you know what’s cool? Since yWriter hasn’t been converted to work on the Mac, Simon actually advertises Scrivener on his site as being more appropriate for Apple fans. 🙂

I’ve got to say that yWriter does a pretty great job in comparison to Scrivener, if you want to consider Scrivener the top of the heap. It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles that Scrivener has, but for Simon to be a one-man-band developer…it’s pretty amazing.

When comparing the two, Scrivener comes out ahead because of one great resource: a massive fan base. What does that do for you? Well, there are seemingly endless online resources showing the user how to do this or that in Scrivener. yWriter just doesn’t have the groupies…but it certainly deserves a screaming horde of fans.

Unfortunately it’s beyond my scope right now to reacquaint myself with yWriter’s many capabilities, so this post is necessarily going to do it an injustice. The only fair thing I can tell you is that you owe it to yourself as a starving artist to check it out for yourself because it does have one screaming advantage over Scrivener…it’s 100% free!

yWriter didn’t become a success story for me, but that was my fault, not the program’s. It was really no more difficult to use than Scrivener (both programs have time-consuming learning curves), but at the time I was using it I wasn’t dedicated enough to dig deep and become proficient. If I had only just discovered it last week, things would be very different. Shoot…I bought Scrivener in September of ’15 and I’m just now inspired to figure it out! Priorities, you know. Life changes.

I’ll move on by saying that you can only help yourself by trying yWriter6. It really will change your writing life, and you can thank Simon Haynes for developing it. Oh, and by the way, even though the program is designed for Windows, I suspect that you Linux users out there could run it by way of the Wine emulator. And doesn’t the Mac ecosystem have a Windows emulator too? I’ve had good luck running Scrivener on my Linux Mint (based on Ubuntu) laptop using Wine.

Now, my next step was another free program called Plume Creator by a gentleman in France named Cyril Jacquet. In referencing for this post I discovered that he has just released an Alpha version this month for a completely new version. Cyril’s project is very much along the lines of yWriter and Scrivener, but I’ve got to say that the version I used three or so years ago was a little more…not clunky, but I had to jump through just a few more small hoops to use it properly compared to yWriter. That’s no detraction from the product. It’s just that Cyril wasn’t as far along in development as Simon at that point.

I actually corresponded with Cyril over a few emails back then, and was able to offer some suggestions for an updated platform which is apparently the new release he speaks of here. He sent me some illustrative messages on how he was going to approach the UI and such, and if the new version reflects what he told me, it’s going to be wonderful. I regret that I don’t have time nowadays to dig into his project and do a proper review, but who knows? One day I may be able to.

I noticed that Cyril stated that Plume Creator will run on Windows or Linux systems. Mac users, again, may be able to use it through an emulator.

You know, software is always advancing unless the developer simply abandons a program, so I find myself wishing I could burrow into both yWriter6 and Plume Creator and just see what I could do with both. But there’s a fact of human psychology…or at least, my psychology…I’ll give preference to the software I actually had to pay for. 🙂 So, for now at least, I’ll go all in with Scrivener. But speaking as one who has been broke more times than he’s had cash…you’d be financially crazy to bypass these two for Scrivener if you’re just getting started. Free is good, especially when the free product is excellent.

So I guess that for now, Scrivener is my Writing Medium. As I tinker with it in setting up a general novel writing template, I’m learning more and more of the hidden nuances to its makeup. And it has a lot of behind-the-scenes features. So much so that if I were flush with cash (maybe after I actually sell a novel?), I’d get this. I’m not shilling for this fellow…I don’t have a financial arrangement with him for endorsing the product. However, it does appear to be the end-all and be-all for learning Scrivener. But $300??? Maybe MakeUseOf will come up with a half-price deal on that.